Page five looks to me to be fairly loose, but nice Kirby pencils, inked by what again in my opinion appears to be George Roussos. I say this wholly based on Greg Theakston’s identification of Roussos appearing in the second story of this issue, The Hunchback of Hollywood. There is a certain similarity of line quality in several pages of the Red Skull story, when I compare those pages to the Hunchback artwork.

I very much like the leaping Captain America figure in the large first panel. The torque of Cap’s torso in relation to his limbs shows the young Kirby’s proficiency with dynamic anatomy. There is also the big O composition on display here, with the compositional circularity of the mass of leaping and tumbling figures.

Page six below is clearly drawn and inked by Kirby. We begin with a very tight floating Skull with a crisply rendered star-burst over newspaper headlines.

The Skull’s figure in panel three is also dynamic Kirby at his best, heralding the fantastic drilling contraption in the large fourth panel. Kirby’s deep space projection skills are far from what they will become, as he uses very little in the way of perspective or depth orientation to augment the drama of the tableau, but it still succeeds rather well.

The men in the street in panels five are nicely drawn and the astounded face of the red coated pipe smoker is crisply inked.

We follow with page seven above, and a wonderful scene of early Kirby cataclysm, as the massive drill rips through the subway station and proceeds to lay waste to scores of buildings. It’s clear that Kirby has reserved these pages for himself to both pencil and ink, and he does so lovingly. Again. the artist’s abilities are far from the height of his prodigious powers in later years, but this panel is still something seldom seen before in terms of a depiction of destruction.

Skipping a page, we finish this entry with page nine below, the upper two thirds of which appear to me to be drawn and inked by the King.

Panel two has a nice upper back shot of Captain America leaning over the cockpit of the power drill, and the leering Red Skull in panel three is a treasure, with deft economy in the ink lines. Panels four through six are fairly fast and loose, but still look to be competent Kirby.